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"Beit Jibrin and Tell Sandahannah," Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly

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176 BEIT JIBRIN AND TELL SANDAHANNAH. By E. w. G. MASTERMAN. THESE names, Beit Jibrin and Tell Sandahannah, probably convey little to a large number of people who, as Biblic,(11 students or as tourists, are familiar with the most famous of the sites of Palestine. And yet they mark the sites of a succession of towns bearing various names which were very import3i11t indeed in bygone ages. I shall, in what follows, treat these two localities as one, as I think there is no doubt that historically they are one, and that the great fortified city-Mareshah, Moresheth, Marissa-which flourished from some centuries before the period of the Hebrew monarchy down to shortly before the Christian era, is the direct predecessor of the city Betogabra, and the later Eleutheropolis. The last-named in Roman times arose almost at the foot of the Tell, and survived under various names through the Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and Crusading days as a city of great importance. The site is a beautiful one, surrounded by all the best country of the Shephelah-fruitful fields and great groves of olives, and, doubtless, in happier days, vineyards, orchards, and forests. It is, moreover, a most important meeting-place of great roads. Here converge roads from Hebron, from Jerusalem, and from the sites of other great cities which flourished along the foothills to the north and north-west. Through here pass well­ worn routes to Ashkelon and Gaza, and to many once important sites to the south, suc.h as Lachish and Beersheba. From this spot, when the city was named Eleutheropolis, 1 the distances of towns and cities were measured, and alongside many of the high roads to-day there still remain some of the milestones which recorded the distances of this city. A city so situated upon the great approaches to the country of Judaea was necessarily fortified-as were similar sites in the debatable land between the Hebrews and the Philistines or Egyptians; and this position as a frontier fort was renewed in the unsettled days of the Crusades. 1 In the Onomasticon. BEIT JIBRIN AND TELL SANDAHANNAH. 177 There is abundant evidence in this small area of the successive civilizations which have here flourished through the ages. We have the cave-dwellers, who made their dwellings in the more ancient of the vast and complicated caves with which the hill-side of Tell Sandahannah is riddled. Excavation has shown that the hill-top has plentiful remains of the Hebrew monarchy. Of the succeeding period, when Greek civilization flourished, we have witnessed the uncovering by Bliss and Macalister of the plan of the whole ancient city, while the tombs of that period are unique in the land. Roman ruins of great walls and mosaics are overlaid by the fortifications of the Crusaders. The Crusading Church of St. Anna (originally doubtless a Byzantine foundation), the remains of which lie upon a hill to the north of the village, has given rise to the name " Sanda­ hannah/' applied to this lofty tell. The present village of a thousand inhabitants covers a mere fraction of the area of the great city of the earlier Christian centuries. Beit Jibrin has recently become of more practical interest to the residents and visitors to Palestine, because of the opening of a good motor-road by which this site can be included in one of the most fascinating and easy all-day motor-drives in Southern Palestine. Before briefly describing this drive I would like to mention something of my previous visits to this site. In the summer of 1893 I broke my journey to Gaza by spending a by no means too comfortable night, in company with Dr. A. Paterson, of Hebron, in a room of the Sheikh's house. My- only interest then in Beit Jibrin was what I had read of the wonderful caves there, and I broke my journey in order to get a hurried glimpse of them. In 1900, however, I had a much better opportunity, as I spent a few never-to-be-forgotten days with Dr. Bliss and Mr. (now Professor) l\lacalister, who were engaged in excavating the summit of Tell Sandahannah. Even more fascinating than the excavations were the visits I made with Mr. Macalister to the labyrinth of bell-shaped caves, to the great columbarium locally called es-suk (" the market "), and to many tombs. Unfortunately the opening of tombs initiated, or stimulated, by our excavations, became for the natives of Beit Jibrin an all too popular habit, and so, when the scientific excavations were over, the people occupied their abundant leisure by searching for further tombs to pillage. The result of some of these efforts were found (1901) by Dr. Peters, of New York, and Dr. Thiersch, of Munich, who, 178 BEIT JIBRIN AND TELL SANDAHANNAH. when reaching this place a few months later, found the now famous " Painted Tombs of Marissa " rifled and irreparably injured, though still presenting features of considerable archaeological interest on account of the very curious paintings upon the walls-especially the animal figures. Dr. Peters shortly afterwards kindly asked me, with Dr. Merrill, the United States Consul in Jerusalem, to come and see the tombs. We had a delightful cross-country ride from Jerusalem, pitched our tents at the foot of Tell Sandahannah, and spent the next day in the tombs copying the couple of hundred Greek inscriptions rudely scratched up the soft walls. My last visit to this site was in the spring of the present year (1926), when a visit there was a part of the programme of the Inter­ national Archaeological Congress. The day's drive was all the more wonderful to me because of the difficulties of my previous visits. It seems even now difficult to realize that we did so much in one day; and yet we did it Sf1 easily that any average tourist could undertake it, if done as ours was, in the month of April. The weather was warm and sunny, the roads firm and hard, and the fields were green and bedecked with flowers. I should like very briefly to mention our route, in the hope that others may realize the opportunities now offered them to visit with ease and comfort a large section of country which, a few years ago, was only within reach of the leisurely traveller, prepared either to camp or to rough it for the night in native houses. Our day's programme took us first to Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity, so greatly improved since the war by the removal of the ugly screen in front of the sanctuary ; then to the Pools of Solomon, now repaired and protected from defilement, and all three filled with clear blue water ; and thence to Hebron, where we had the high privilege-seldom accorded to a large party like ours­ of visiting the sacred Haram, the mosque over the traditional Cave of Machpelah, so long resolutely closed to the "Infidel." We viewed the cenotaphs, with their sumptuous embroidered coverings, which stand-or are supposed to stand-over the actual tombs of the Patriarchs in the cave below. We were invited to peer down the well-like opening and to view by the light of a lowered candle the floor of the cave itself. Rejoining our motor-cars we resumed our way. Returning a little by the road by which we came, we then turned off westwards and pursued a picturesque mountain road down BEIT JIBRIN AND TELL SANDAHANNAH. 179 through winding valleys now showing great shelves of barren rock where once stood terraces for vineyards and olives. On reaching the foothills, the valleys opened out into rich corn lands dotted on all sides with clumps of ancient olive trees under some of which, a little short of our destination, we lunched ; but our conductor would allow us no siesta, and soon we again mounted our cars, and in a few minutes reached the rather straggling and iintidy village of Beit Jibrin. Time allowed of our seeing only two samples of the archaeological remains. We were first conducted, by the official guardian of the antiquities, to some remarkable mosaics, over which the Antiquities Department of the Government have raised a building for protection against wind, rain, and robbers. Two of these mosaics belonged to a Roman villa of about A.D. 200, but the largest, with many birds and beasts, which lies at a higher level, appears to have been the floor of a Christian church of some three centuries later. We then took the road running southwards, passing" the lofty Tell Sandahannah to our right and the ruins of the Church of St. Anna on the left, and so visited the famous Marissa tombs. Though guarded to some extent under the Turks when they were first found, they have been considerably damaged during the war, when all effort to protect them ceased. Besides wilful damage, great deterioration has set in through the effect of light and air upon the paintings ; they have very much faded during the twenty-five years since I first visited them. One could not but be thankful, as one peered around at the half-perished procession of weird animals depicted on the walls of the tombs, that a permanent record of what they were like has been made in the facsimile paintings published in the P.E.F. volume, The Painted Tombs of Marissa. Compelled to leave all too soon, we threaded our way northwards through the fine groves of ancient olive trees of Beit Jibrin and took the route along the remarkable north-to-south valley which marks off the division of the Shephelah from the mountains of Judaea.
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